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This edited volume includes a compilation of new approaches to the investigation of inscriptions from different cultural contexts. Innovative research questions about "material text cultures" are examined with reference to Classical Athens, late ancient and Byzantine churches and urban spaces, Hellenistic and Roman cities, and medieval buildings.
A fully updated and comprehensive companion to Romanesque and Gothic art history This definitive reference brings together cutting-edge scholarship devoted to the Romanesque and Gothic traditions in Northern Europe and provides a clear analytical survey of what is happening in this major area of Western art history. The volume comprises original theoretical, historical, and historiographic essays written by renowned and emergent scholars who discuss the vibrancy of medieval art from both thematic and sub-disciplinary perspectives. Part of the Blackwell Companions to Art History, A Companion to Medieval Art, Second Edition features an international and ambitious range of contributions coverin...
The exhibition "Meisterwerke muhammedanischer Kunst" that took place in Munich in 1910 marked a turning point in the approach to Islamic Art. The show attempted to break free of Orientalism and exotic fantasies and, in doing so, set a new standard for the reception of Islamic art in Europe. Moreover, naming the Islamic artefacts masterpieces, it layed claim to bestow upon Islamic art “a place equal to that of other cultural periods”. This book is the first comprehensive study on this path-breaking exhibition. It includes a wealth of unpublished material and numerous novel ideas on the subject and addresses the exhibition’s historical context, organization, realization and display as well as its reception in the West and its later influence on the study of Islamic art.
Ottonian Imperial Art and Portraiture represents the first art historical consideration of the patronage of the Ottonian Emperors Otto III (983-1002) and Henry II (1002-1024). Author Eliza Garrison analyzes liturgical artworks created for both rulers with the larger goal of addressing the ways in which individual art objects and the collections to which they belonged were perceived as elements of a material historical narrative and as portraits. Since these objects and images had the capacity to stand in for the ruler in his physical absence, she argues, they also performed political functions that were bound to their ritualized use in the liturgy not only during the ruler's lifetime, but even after his death. Garrison investigates how treasury objects could relay officially sanctioned information in a manner that texts alone could not, offering the first full length exploration of this central phenomenon of the Ottonian era.
Late Medieval and Renaissance art was surprisingly pushy; its architecture demanded that people move through it in prescribed patterns, its sculptures played elaborate games alternating between concealment and revelation, while its paintings charged viewers with imaginatively moving through them. Viewers wanted to interact with artwork in emotional and/or performative ways. This inventive and personal interface between viewers and artists sometimes conflicted with the Church’s prescribed devotional models, and in some cases it complemented them. Artists and patrons responded to the desire for both spontaneous and sanctioned interactions by creating original ways to amplify devotional exper...
The first empire-wide study to examine the eclectic marble statuettes collected and displayed by the wealthiest Roman aristocrats
Shedding new light on the American campaign to democratize Western Germany after World War II, Capturing the German Eye uncovers the importance of cultural policy and visual propaganda to the U.S. occupation. Cora Sol Goldstein skillfully evokes Germany’s political climate between 1945 and 1949, adding an unexpected dimension to the confrontation between the United States and the USSR. During this period, the American occupiers actively vied with their Soviet counterparts for control of Germany’s visual culture, deploying film, photography, and the fine arts while censoring images that contradicted their political messages. Goldstein reveals how this U.S. cultural policy in Germany was shaped by three major factors: competition with the USSR, fear of alienating German citizens, and American domestic politics. Explaining how the Americans used images to discredit the Nazis and, later, the Communists, she illuminates the instrumental role of visual culture in the struggle to capture German hearts and minds at the advent of the cold war.
In Modris Eksteins’s hands, the interlocking stories of Vincent van Gogh and art dealer Otto Wacker reveal the origins of the fundamental uncertainty that is the hallmark of the modern era. Through the lens of Wacker’s sensational 1932 trial in Berlin for selling fake Van Goghs, Eksteins offers a unique narrative of Weimar Germany, the rise of Hitler, and the replacement of nineteenth-century certitude with twentieth-century doubt. Berlin after the Great War was a magnet for art and transgression. Among those it attracted was Otto Wacker, a young gay dancer turned art impresario. His sale of thirty-three forged Van Goghs and the ensuing scandal gave Van Gogh’s work unprecedented commer...
What is an image? How can we describe the experience of looking at images, and how do they become meaningful to us? In what sense are images like or unlike propositions? Participants of the 33rd International Wittgenstein Symposium--philosophers as well as historians of art, science, and literature--provide many stimulating answers. Some of the contributions are dedicated to Wittgenstein’s thoughts on images while others testify to the important role notions coined or inspired by Wittgenstein--“seeing as”, “picture games” and the dichotomy of “saying and showing”--play in the field of picture theory today. This first volume of the Proceedings of the 2010 conference addresses readers interested in the history and theory of images, and in the philosophy of Wittgenstein.
A richly illustrated account of how premodern botanical illustrations document evolving knowledge about plants and the ways they were studied in the past. This book traces the history of botanical illustration in the Mediterranean from antiquity to the early modern period. By examining Greek, Latin, and Arabic botanical inquiry in this early era, Andrew Griebeler shows how diverse and sophisticated modes of plant depiction emerged and ultimately gave rise to practices now recognized as central to modern botanical illustration. The author draws on centuries of remarkable and varied documentation from across Europe and the Mediterranean. Lavishly illustrated, Botanical Icons marshals ample evi...